("Quid coniuratio est?")
FEDS "FIB" ON OKLAHOMA CITY BOMB SAYS EX-HIGH LEVEL FBI OFFICIAL
Evidence Indicates High-Tech Device
An expert on security and terrorism says the government isn't telling the truth about the bomb that devastated the building in Oklahoma City.
EXCLUSIVE TO THE SPOTLIGHT
By Mike Blair
A very high tech and top secret barometric bomb was the cause of the explosion that destroyed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City on April 19, with a loss of life that may reach and even exceed 200 persons.
That is the conclusion of an FBI veteran with 28 years of service, Ted L. Gunderson of Santa Monica, California. He dismisses as a cover-up U.S. Justice Department claims that a simple bomb, concocted from fertilizer and fuel oil, was responsible for the blast.
According to Gunderson, the bomb was an electrohydrodynamic gaseous fuel device (barometric bomb), which could not have been built by former Persian Gulf War Army veteran Timothy McVeigh and his rural Michigan farming friends, brothers James and Terry Nichols -- at least not without the aid of persons, as yet unknown. Those persons would need to possess knowledge of research classified at the very highest level of top secret by the U.S. government, in addition to access to a vast array of chemical and electronic components.
Former Army Sgt. McVeigh has been charged as being a key player in the bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building and the Nichols brothers stand accused of conspiring with McVeigh in the production of explosives...
McVeigh, initially charged as "John Doe No. 1" in a federal warrant, and as yet, according to the Justice Department and FBI, an unknown "John Doe No. 2," the subject of a massive nation-wide dragnet, are accused of delivering the bomb to the front of the federal building and igniting it.
Gunderson, in several lengthy interviews with The Spotlight, has revealed that he knows the inventors of the type of bomb that devastated the Oklahoma City building, one of whom, upon learning of details of the blast, told Gunderson, "That's my bomb."
Gunderson has obtained from an expert who has knowledge of the device an abstract description, including a diagram, of the bomb, described in the abstract as "top secret due to the ease in which the device can be created."
"Technically," according to the abstract, "it is considered an 'A-neutronic' device, hence the designated 'Q' clearance is required for information."
"For the sake of security, the electronic detonation sequence shall not be described herein" to prevent the process from being copied, the abstract indicates.
From sources familiar with U.S. government classification methods, "Q" clearance is required to obtain access to, among other things, nuclear weapons components, including small -- easily transportable by a single person -- portable nuclear bombs.
Vastly more sophisticated than the fuel oil-fertilizer bomb [CN -- "The Mannlicher-Carcano bomb"] now being described by federal agents as weighing up to 5,000 pounds, the A-neutronic device may have been "the size of a small pineapple," according to the abstract.
-+- Misleading Claims -+-
Gunderson, who retired in 1979 from the FBI as the senior special agent in charge of the bureau's Los Angeles office, takes a dim view of FBI and Justice Department claims that the bomb responsible for the Oklahoma City blast was a concoction of fertilizer and fuel oil, delivered to the front of the building in a large rented moving van.
Federal officials started out claiming the bomb weighed 1,000 pounds, then up-scaled it to 1,400 pounds, then 4,000 pounds and now up to 5,000 pounds, with claims of the size of the delivery vehicle also being up-scaled from a delivery van to now a moving van.
"It appears the government keeps up-grading the size of the vehicle and the 'fertilizer' bomb to coincide with the damage," Gunderson said.
The attention of The Spotlight was focused on Gunderson when this newspaper received a fax sent out by the high-level FBI veteran, dated April 26. Headed "To Whom It May Concern," the fax message was sent to a number of individuals and organizations, including his former employer, the FBI.
-+- Seismographic Report -+-
Gunderson included with the fax a copy of a seismograph record from the Oklahoma Geological Survey, located at the University of Oklahoma at Norman, about 15 miles south of Oklahoma City.
The seismograph record indicates that there were two explosions involved in the April 19 bombing, which coincides with the reports of a number of people in and around the building at the time it was devastated.
Gunderson stated in his fax message that from the seismographic record, Dr. Ken Louzza at the university "advised there were two surface waves, one at 9:02 am and 13 seconds and the other at 9:02 am and 23 seconds on April 19, 1995 (10 seconds apart). He stated [the] chart indicates two detonations."
Despite this evidence of two distinct blasts and reports of people at the scene, the FBI and Justice Department insists there was only one explosion, a position which up until now the national media has chosen to believe and has ignored the university seismographic report.
In confronting the university's seismologist with this FBI claim, Gunderson was told, "I don't care what the government says. There were two events, 10 seconds apart."
To make certain of what he had been told, Gunderson, with years of interviewing in criminal cases under his belt, said "I wrote it down and repeated it back to him and he confirmed that was what he stated."
It is noted that the FBI, after insisting for several days after the bombing that it had occurred at 9:04 am, has now changed the official time to 9:02, which conforms to the seismographic record from the University of Oklahoma.
In any case, it was the two-explosion reports that led Gunderson to rule out the fertilizer bomb and to zero in on the more sophisticated A-neutronic device.
Although the abstract provided to Gunderson is relatively technical in nature, it basically states that the bomb consists of a cylinder of just "64 ounces or more of ammonium nitrate," which surrounds a shaft of aluminum silicate that has at its center another shaft of an explosive known as PETN, described to The Spotlight as a "low volume explosive."
The abstract states that when the PETN is detonated the top of the canister or tank containing the bomb "flies upwards and the bottom of the tank opens up into a flower petal shape. Immediately the ammonium nitrate mixes with the shattered micro- encapsulated aluminum silicate to create an even more devastating explosive fuel cloud. This cloud is then energized with a high potential electrostatic field resulting in the creation of millions of microfronts."
The abstract further indicates that the "cold cloud" is then detonated by a charge that "is cushioned from the first blast due to a shock absorbing cavity."
"This time," the document continues, "the cold cloud ignites, creating a shock wave which surpasses the traditional effects of TNT. The most astounding effects of this type of detonation is the immediate atmospheric overpressure which has a tendency to blow out windows [of] any structure within the vicinity of the blast."
-+- Building Vulnerable -+-
In reporting on the vulnerability of the building to the explosion, the New York Times in its April 28 edition, page A27, reported as follows: "The Federal Building in Oklahoma City may also have been vulnerable because of its ground level atrium and glass facade. The problem was not with flying glass -- a small hazard compared with collapsing concrete -- but with the way the blast was able to penetrate the glass easily and push up the floors at the lower levels, some experts said."
The Times reported further: "Anatol Longinow, an engineer at Wiss, Janney, Elstner Associates, a firm in Chicago that investigates structural failures, said that when a bomb goes off at street level, the blast 'expands spherically, and it hits the floors up instead of down,' by coming in under them."
"'The floors are not intended to go up in any event,' he said. If pushed in a direction opposite from normal, he said, the floors may break loose relatively easily and crash down in a pancake- like pile."
It is this "pancake-like pile" of the several stories of the building that has caused rescue workers and firemen so much trouble in their search for survivors and retrieval of the dead from the structure.
-+- Confirmed At Hearing -+-
However, it was reports from a hearing on the charges faced by McVeigh held before Federal Magistrate Ronald Howland in El Reno, Oklahoma, on April 28, that the final clue to the use of the A- neutronic device in destroying the federal building was revealed.
USA Today of April 28 reported on its page 3A that final clue. The paper's editors do not realize that they had inserted in their newspaper the final piece of the bomb's mosaic.
The article stated: "The decision came after hours of testimony from [FBI] Special Agent John Hersley, who said a shirt McVeigh was wearing when he was arrested [by an Oklahoma state trooper during his alleged get-away] had traces of the explosive PDTN."
(This is not a typographical error; there are two kinds of explosives with similar names associated with the bomb described by Gunderson -- PETN and PDTN. PETN is used in the initial detonation which releases ammonium nitrate and aluminum silicate to mix in a cloud. PDTN is used to detonate the electrically- charged cloud. The reason PDTN is not used in both charges is because, if it were used in the first detonation, it would be of such a violent explosive nature that it would detonate the secondary charge at the same time. -- Spotlight Editor)
When this was passed on to Gunderson by The Spotlight and after the veteran FBI boss had consulted with an expert connected with the design of the A-neutronic device, Gunderson called this newspaper, stating:
"You just won the Super Bowl."
The explosive PDTN, Gunderson had been told, is the substance used to detonate the second explosion, which in turn detonates the electrified cloud mixture of ammonium nitrate and aluminum silicate, causing the major devastating blast that virtually wiped out nearly two-thirds of the federal building.
Completing the picture of the A-neutronic device even further, the Arkansas Democrat Gazette, published in Little Rock, in describing the FBI's contention in its April 30 edition that the "fertilizer" bomb concoction was detonated by using explosive cord wrapped around the barrels, it stated: "The barrels were somehow tied together with high-explosive detonator cord, a rope- like device that contains the explosive PETN, an official told the Dallas Morning News."
While it is true that the explosive PETN may be used in explosive cord, as described, it is also, according to the A-neutronic bomb designers, the explosive used in the initial phase of detonating the A-neutronic device -- the release and dispersal of the ammonium nitrate and aluminum silicate combination.
There is no evidence that has surfaced, or [has been] claimed by FBI agents, that both explosive substances -- PDTN and PETN -- were used in their "fertilizer" bomb story.
At 5:45 pm on April 28, Gunderson received a call from the FBI office where he had faxed his memo and the material he had collected on the bomb.
"They asked me if I cared if they faxed my fax to other field offices around the country," Gunderson told The Spotlight. "It was a BS call. They just wanted to know where I am."
Gunderson, whose life has been at risk numerous times during his long career, said, quite matter-of-factly, "Of course, if anything does happen to me, it just confirms what I have uncovered."
Was a moving van used to transport the bomb to the blast site?
"They could have delivered it in a suitcase," the former G-man said.
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LATE-BREAKING NEWS
The Spotlight received the following message from Ted Gunderson on May 4:
"I was contacted anonymously on May 3, 1995 by a federal criminal investigator who is involved in the [Oklahoma City bomb] case. He stated the bombing was an enhanced reflection wave detonation with a duplex charge. Had it been ammonia nitrate [of the type used in a fertilizer bomb] there would have been nitric acid clouds and none of the workers would have been allowed in the area without breathing masks."
"He stated 'John Doe 2' was vaporized by design. Timothy McVeigh is also a throw-away [a term used by the FBI and others for an expendable asset]. He advised that the debri(s) field was collapsed toward the center. There was something inside the building, probably another bomb. It was a 'drop and shear' charge."
"They looked for signs of ammonia nitrate (fertilizer) and there were none. He stated Gunderson is 100 percent right."
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From The Spotlight, May 15, 1995 issue. The Spotlight, a populist weekly newspaper. To subscribe, call 1-800-522-6292 (In Maryland phone (301) 951-6292).
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